


The Judge and the Executioner

by afullrevolution



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF!Stiles, F/M, Furies, M/M, Pre-Relationship, half human!Stiles, it sort of gets there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-11
Updated: 2013-01-11
Packaged: 2017-11-23 22:09:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/627035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afullrevolution/pseuds/afullrevolution
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles’ mother told him he needed to pick a person to act as his compass. He needed to choose someone he could trust with everything, because that person would be the judge to his executioner. Yet, in the aftermath of everything, Stiles lost his way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Erinyes

**Author's Note:**

> Rating for violence and language. Not betad - and given that I lost the edits to the second chapter, it might be shaky. 
> 
> So much trouble posting this for reasons that are entirely my own fault.
> 
> Most decidedly not cannon compliant.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone knew that Stiles’ was the only child of a single parent. Many of his classmates had vague memories of a woman with thick brown hair who had brought cupcakes every year on Stiles birthday. They never saw her the way Stiles did.

Everyone knew that Stiles’ was the only child of a single parent. Many of his classmates had vague memories of a woman with thick brown hair who had brought cupcakes every year on Stiles birthday.

Outside of those memories, anyone looking for information on her, information on Stiles, would never have gotten far. She was – as the saying goes – a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, who happened to have a very pretty packaging.

And she was lovely, with a soft face set with deep brown eyes and surrounded by thick brown hair. Her linen skirts had swirled around her thighs and her boots emphasized the shape of her calves. A tattoo of a snake wound its way up her arm and disappeared under her blouse.

Stiles’ father had first seen her at a farmers market where he was stationed to walk rounds, a deputy in that ridiculous uniform that did not flatter him. He saw her, handing a recycled plastic bag filled with vegetables across to a someone, he couldn’t have said who, and had been entranced, unable to look away. He could have sworn she was drawing in the sunlight to her.

She had looked up at him, a smile already on her face, and winked. John had run.

The next week he'd taken an hour to approach the stand, circling around and back again. When he'd finally gotten there, she had had a bag waiting for him with peas and zucchini.

She had tried telling him what to do with them. When he said he didn't cook, didn't know how to do anything but pancakes really. She smiled at him with a soft chuckle, told him he needed to find someone to cook those up for him. Winked (he would find she was prone to it) and told him to give it a try, to come back for the Wednesday market and tell her how it went.

John overcooked the zucchini while he remembering her smile and ate the peas raw. It was marvelous.

On Wednesday she laughed at his story, smiled fondly at him as if he had done exactly right by her vegetables. Somehow, he couldn’t walk away, was captivated. He stayed, helped her pack up, her two companions watching him as he lifted crates. He was aware of the absurdity of trying to show off, but he somehow wanted to prove to her that he could help, that he could be useful, even as it looked like she had an easier time with the crates than he did.

She agreed to go to coffee with him regardless. Over cookies she told him her name was Tisiphone and recounted stories about the early cultivation of peas (earliest agriculture – some people called it a revolution) and health benefits of zucchinis (magnesium).

Somehow, he took her home to have her show him how to prepare them. She cooked him dinner and explained every step. He watched her mouth move and hips sway. She laughed when he couldn't remember any of her instructions. Told him she’d just have to show him again.

Everything was easy with her somehow, between her smiles and stories. He felt like he was walking on sunshine, felt as if he were flying when he told her so and she told him he was her compass. Her morning star.

When he asked in return if that meant he was the first thing she wanted to see in the morning, she kissed him and said "also the last when I go to bed".

A whirlwind romance and she was moving her few bits and pieces into his house after only months of acquaintance. She disappeared to the farm during the day, but when he came home she was there with a fresh (and always seasonal) meal and stories that made John feel lighter than air.

She told him that she didn't believe in marriage or banks. He smiled and told her that it didn’t matter. Who could pin down a child of the earth, a daughter of the moon? He never felt like words were enough to tell her how much she meant, how he would do anything for her. He started bringing her flowers, starting with bouquets of ivy, amaranth and rosemary instead, armfuls of freesia. She told him she adored him.

Stiles was born when they had barely known each a year. John had been terrified when she told him, but she had wrapped him in blankets and surrounded him with stories about how fantastic it would be. How the child would scream to show he had good lungs, make a mess to show how creative he was. He would come home covered in dirt to show how much he loved the earth.

And if it's a girl? John had asked. She would be the same. But it was a boy.

A home birth, she refused to go to that place that smelled of bottled chemicals. The old woman from the farm was a midwife and took her through the screaming and hours of pain. Gave her teas to drink and told her to think of her son, of why she was doing this.

She had asked as her breath panted from her body "But why is this so painful? How do so many people do this? Think this is a good idea?" it was the only time John ever heard her express doubt.

She gave Stiles an impossible name and gazed at him fondly. Told him that he clearly was his mama’s baby. She could see it, even if took after his daddy. The look she gave John was adoring.

She took care of everything with the baby, the paper work and the doctor’s visits. But insisted that John bond, told him to hold the baby close, and took them on family outings to the sea.

John had wondered if she would change, but somehow she stayed the same, still cooked dinner and told stories, just now to an audience of two. John loved it. Would brush her hair back from her face to kiss both her cheeks and brought her stephanotis and pink roses.

She took Stiles everywhere with her and John listed as she told the boy stories and explained how the wind worked, how bees flew, and had him repeat it after her.

When Stiles was four, John asked her if the boy would go to public school. She laughed, and told him of course, he had to lean how to be a boy, that a social education was important and he couldn't stay tied to her apron strings. She wouldn't be there for him forever.

When Stiles wasn't interested in school, interrupted class endlessly and was diagnosed with ADHD, she told John that it was ok, that he just looked at the world a little differently. It was only be expected, but he would have to decide himself what to do with that. But he was exactly what he was supposed to be. She made everything ok and he gave her bird of paradise and bouvardia. Brought her bulbs of hyacinth.

After eleven years of knowing her, adoring her, John came home to find her sitting at the table, hands folded in front of her. She told him that she had been to the doctors, that the cancer had spread throughout her body, and she wasn't going to poison herself for a slim chance and she wasn’t going to the hospital. John brought her pear blossoms and filled her room with peonies. Gave her stock.

She died 38 days later. John didn't know what to do. The house seemed darker, food lost its taste. He found that for all her lessons in the kitchen, he couldn't actually seem to remember anything about cooking. He was too numb to be surprised when his little boy led him to the table and cooked him dinner. That Stiles was the one who took care of him.  
It took a year for him to be able look from the table and actually see his son again, to taste his food. To realize that Stiles was cooking with the same movements his mother had used and telling the same sorts of stories.

It wasn't until Stiles got his driver’s license that he realized the name on his son's birth certificate was one he didn’t recognize, much less know how to say, and that the line for the mother’s name was blank.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tisiphone ("vengeful destruction") is the name of one of the three Erinyes (furies) named by Virgil.
> 
>  
> 
> Flowers:  
> Freesia is for trust. 
> 
> Ivy, amaranth and rosemary all indicate aspects of fidelity. 
> 
> Stephanotis – happiness in marriage
> 
> Stock – you will always be beautiful to me
> 
> Pink roses - Love, Grace, Gentility, You're so Lovely, Perfect Happiness,
> 
> Bird of paradise and bouvardia – types of appreciation 
> 
> Hyacinth - love’s presence over long stretches of time and place.
> 
> Pear blossoms – health and hope
> 
> Peonies - Healing, Life, Happy Marriage


	2. Erinyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles’ mother told him he needed to pick a person to act as his compass, to guide his steps. He needed to pick someone he could trust with everything, because that the person would be the judge to his executioner.

Stiles’ mother told him he needed to pick a person to act as his compass, to guide his steps. She told him that the person would be the judge to his executioner. So he needed to pick someone he could trust with everything. 

\-----

Stiles was horrified when Scott became a werewolf, not because of the claws or the sudden rage issues, but because Scott didn't relish it, thought he was a monster, abnormal. 

Stiles had thought, so briefly, that he would have someone to share all of this with. Like his mother had had with the ladies on the farm. The old woman who had taught him about spinning straw and the young one who had shown him how catch moonlight. Until his mother died, her shell of a body unable to contain pure fury, just like she’d told him. And they were gone, all three of them. 

And he was here, left to decide whether to look away or take up his pine needles. To decide what punishments to meet.

He'd tried out different compasses. First with Lydia. He had admired her ruthless efficiency. But his rules had spun and readjust depending on what she wanted, what she needed. She was too unstable, playing too much of a game. The words she used were always weapons. 

Stiles had reconsidered. Had moved on to Scott with his enormous heart and desire for everyone’s good. It worked for so long. The two of them together, Scott unknowingly guiding Stiles. The blind leading the blind. 

It meant that Stiles always had to take the hard path, tried to make sure that everyone lived to see the end. He wasn't allowed to just kill Jackson and keep the peace, but he didn't know that this was better. Too many people suffered before he finally found a way to unwind the problem. 

When Scott wanted to stop him from going after Gerard, Stiles felt like perhaps he had had enough. But to disagree with your compass was catastrophic, But perhaps, Stiles thought, it had already begun, his roots torn up in Scott’s crisis of identity. 

Stiles blamed himself for the whole mess. If he'd been looking, if he'd acted faster then this wouldn't have happened. Erica, sweet little thing, wouldn't have been torn to pieces and Boyd fallen through the cracks with her. 

Which led him here. 

\-----

His mother told him that everyone writes and signs their own death sentences. That they were just the tools to see it carried out. 

\-----

Stiles was furious. He couldn’t do this shit without something to ground him, to call him back. 

But, he took his needles, put feathers in his shoes and tree gum on his arms. He found the body with breath still rattling in its chest.

Stiles sat down crosslegged and watched as the ash slowed the body’s healing, at how the bite kept him just alive. Torturous, surely, if the brain hadn't already shut down the pain, flooded the system with shock. 

Stiles wondered how Derek was doing with he connection. He’d given the bite and there might be some feedback. But then Derek hadn't been able to find Jackson. 

Stiles decided he had enough. You didn't trick someone else into doing the killing. If you wanted someone dead, you did it yourself. 

Because belief and intent were what you need to do the unbelievable and Stiles had those in spades. Stiles reached in the pouch of his hoodie and pulled out the pine needles. Already soaked in moonlight and sharp as vinegar. 

\-----

When Derek had started looking for Stiles after Jackson and Lydia were safe at home, he had never expected to find him crouched over Gerhard's crumpled form, gouging the body's left eye with a shimmering pine needle, piercing his left hand with another. Shifting to stab a third into his heart. 

Stiles had looked up at him when Derek stooped down next to him, just watching. Too relieved that Stiles was all right to care with more than a mild curiosity. But then if Stiles had been dousing Gerhard with kerosene, Derek would have lit the match.

Stiles rocked back onto his heels, looked at him for a long moment and then told him "The right eye to make sure his dreams are always obscured, the left hand that he can never move again, and the heart so he can never recover." 

Derek pointed toward the needles still in Stiles’ hand “How do you get them to actually puncture the muscle?”

Stiles looked down at his hand and over at the body. “Moonlight, actually. That shit makes a sharp blade.” Derek nodded.

\-----

But he asked, as they walked back toward the stink of Stiles jeep “What are you.”

Stiles snorted “What should I be? I’m the avenging fury, the hangman. Perhaps ‘angel of death’ would work for you?” he giggled, hysteria in his voice, an angry sound that seemed to well up and bubble. “I’m supposed to keep the balance among the supernatural, but it’s all very vague as to what that’s supposed to mean. I get to choose my own compass. I used to use Scott.” Stiles voice stopped as they reached the jeep. 

He opened the back door and crawled up onto the seat. “Scott decided to work with that piece of shit and didn't tell me. People got hurt because I didn't kill the fucker earlier, because I picked an anchor who didn't trust me” he huddled into himself, began rocking slowly back and forth. Derek stood by the door, hands clenched around the frame of the door. 

“Did you know,” Stiles whispered, his face pressing into the seat. “That you look like a swirl of green and brown?” 

Stiles turned his head back at Derek, stared at him, his eyes alight with a strange fire Derek had never seen before. His hand flashed out and fisted in Derek's shirt, pulling Derek forward. “You’ve never been someone I thought I needed to push across the edge.” 

Stiles dropped his hand and pushed himself back into the seat, head falling against the headrest. Derek slid in next to him, reached out and touched the bruise smeared across Stiles’ face. 

“I'm half human” Stiles muttered, his eyes, banked to a simmer, returning to Derek. “I get to live, I get to die, I get to bruise and I can't heal like you” he sucked a breath in and coughed it out heavily “but I am also half ... other ... who the fuck knows what. My mother always laughed when I asked and said it didn't matter. Said that the stories of the Greek Erinyes were closest, but that language was just a social construct."

“Did you know,” Stiles paused “that mules can't have children? Of course you do, everyone knows that. Hybrids are ... close enough to real to draw breath, but not to pass anything on.” 

Derek held him until his breath evened out, then pulled the keys from Stiles’ fingers and stretched the seatbelt across his body. 

\-----

Lydia was not stupid. She saw the changes in both Derek and Stiles after the warehouse. She watched as Stiles’ face healed and paid attention as he seemed to tip off balance. How he smiled at people with his teeth and avoided letting anyone touch him. Smelled constantly like the pine scent of her mother’s living room after cleaning crew came through. 

And Lydia took notice of how Derek softened, how his face lost some of those grim lines. How he pulled Stiles back when he looked his worst. Saw how it was Derek who tried to maintain a relationship with Scott when Stiles wouldn’t go near him. 

Lydia drew her own conclusions and approached Derek, because Stiles had begun to scare the shit out of her. There was a barely contained rage in him that reminded Lydia of how she had felt when she first opened her eyes in the hospital. But Stiles seemed like he was made of it. When he looked at her, she wondered if he could read her terror. Derek dampen him down, reined him in, made him seem human.

But for all her fear, Lydia had been screwed enough by the crazy in this town. Knowledge was power and she sure as hell was going to be strong. Being outside of everything hadn’t protected her or Jackson. 

So Lydia made sure Derek understood that Jackson was part of his pack. Demanded to know what the place of humans in a werewolf pack were, because damned if Jackson was going anywhere without her. 

Stiles had appeared in the doorway and told her they were all damned anyway, but it didn’t matter. Pack was pack and the more the better.

Derek’s speech was actually more welcoming.

\-----

"Derek, I know just about every shit thing that people have done. I can see their betrayals and the anger. The murder that is written under their words and the anger inscribed on the skin over their knuckles. 

“And what am I? I specialize in driving people insane, force them to hear voices and the demands of the dead. I look at someone and the first thing I see is where they are weakest, how to drive them over an edge."

And Stiles told him about how he tried to be human because that was easier, because his mother had always said that mercy was part of justice. Stiles could technically set his own rules, but it was too easy to step off that proverbial cliff. To remain human in fact and not only appearance, he needed someone to hold him back. 

And Derek wondered as he sat there, back against the wall, watching, if Stiles felt human emotions. If his anger, always so close to the surface, was all that drove him or if there was something else. 

Derek knew that he had the chemical responses to suggest emotion. He could see the way his skin flushed, smell the changes in his scent. 

Stiles reached out his hand and Derek took it, using Stiles’ balance to pull himself up. 

"Come on then" Stiles was telling him, "We've got to go find those selkie. See if we can reason with or if we need to tear them to pieces. It'll be fun."

\-----

The point of dawn, long past the witching hour, moments before the sun actually breaks the horizon, became a point of terror for the hunters and hunted, the prey and predator alike. 

It's the point at which a figure would appear in the room, next to the campfire, as if he had been there for hours. 

He didn’t ever come from anywhere. Carried the sent of evergreen and couldn’t be tracked. Some people claimed he was a dream or just the essence of vengeance. 

Sometimes he talked, sometimes he just drew a handful of needles and stabbed them into skin without a word. 

He was a nightmare, a hallucination. 

Some people claimed he has a pack of wolves at his back and other people said there was a flame of a witch at his side. Most people thought he traveled alone, vanishing in the clouds of smoke he left behind him. 


	3. Guided

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles makes his choice and Allison feels the effects.

"Look", Stiles told him, sitting in the stream Derek had set him in, washing the blood from his face, from his hands. Running water was always cleansing in the old stories.

"Look, we ... neither of us have a lot of friends. Probably because we love self-flagellation and don’t think we are worth much. We hate ourselves for fighting, for lying, for taking the world on our shoulders. But we aren’t fucking Atlas, we are getting crushed by this. 

“We are too idiotic to see that everyone lies to each other about who they are. Who can be summed up in words, after all? 

“And we – we can’t tell the truth when we don't exactly know what we are or where we are going. So we'll keep lying, misrepresenting ourselves, and generally attempting to deceive everyone.

“But, here’s the catch. We could do it together. It would be safer together."

Stiles reached out a hesitant hand. His movement raised the smell of the resin and oils he had painted across his skin. 

"Derek," Stiles said again, "it doesn't get any better or worse, the world is going keep on being a wonderful and terrible place – encompass the manifold meanings of ‘awesome’ – that we have to live in until we don’t. But we can make our lives a little bit more ... acceptable ... if we agree to exist around each other."

And Derek accepted, because what the hell else did he have going? 

And having Stiles look at him (with eyes that sometimes flashed with the fury he embodied) stare at him and be all right with his existence helped. Stiles' belief that Derek's judgment was solid was something he found he needed. He felt anchored.

\-----

Allison couldn't have told you why she headed out that night, why she went over to the playground. Why she sat down on the swings. 

It was just something she did on occasion after all, didn't know why she chose that night or what made it so special. Couldn’t have said why she still sat down despite the fact that there was already someone there. 

The someone looked like Stiles, but later she was uncertain if Stiles had actually been there or if she he had filled the role of a specter, a hallucination created by deranged mind to represent her anger. 

But, in retrospect, it hardly mattered. Even if he had been there, it still wasn't exactly him, couldn't have been him. She must have projected at least a bit, because the thing’s eyes had shown with a pitiless fire, looked like it was going to burn everything in its path. She just wasn't sure if the entire event had been nightmare or real. 

It was hard to tell what was real some days. 

But, for all the terror of the moment, that had been the night the nightmares ended. The Stiles with the burning eyes had helped her through them. Had talked to her, taken her hand and curled her fingers around a handful of petals. 

There had been a period, after moving to Beacon Hills, around when her mom died, when she had gone a little crazy. She had imagined that there were witches and that her entire family was composed of murderers. Had thought there were werewolves and other things that went bump in the night. 

She supposed in retrospect that it was fitting. Werewolves were, after all, often used as a representation of the imbalance of puberty, the changes in the body, of raging hormones and seemingly inexplicable transformations. 

She couldn't remember that year clearly now, but she thought maybe her delusions had been a coping mechanism, the shock of finding out her aunt had killed all those people, of her grandfather disappearing, and – above all – her mother shooting herself. Her mother had always seemed so put together and strong. It had been easier, Allison supposed, to accuse a nightmare of stealing mother away than to blame her mother for leaving. 

Getting away had helped, going to school in another state. She was studying psychology now in an effort to understand what her mother had gone through, what had happened to her as well. But then they said that the best shrinks had been crazy once, often still were.

Her dad, her beloved dad, was still a little broken. Every now and then when Allison looked at him, she could tell he was seeing her mother in her, that it tore him up inside. They didn't talk about it, but she was strong enough now to wait for him to be ready. 

He had mentioned werewolves once - shortly after she had passed through hell (as she liked to call it) - and she had reassured him that he didn't need to play into her delusions any longer. That she was better. He didn't need to worry anymore, it had just been a phase. He had smiled tentatively when she told him she could be happy now and wanted the same for him.

And she was getting better. She could smile again. 

She didn't come home often, it was still painful, but she made sure to see her father on occasion. 

And when she did, she always had coffee with Stiles. She would never have thought that it would be Stiles she kept in touch with, caught up with. But he didn't treat her with the care that some people did, didn't shy away from her like most of her high school friends did. Lydia still looked like she expected Allison to suddenly pull out a knife and attack. Jackson wouldn’t look at her at all. But Stiles seemed to accept that her episodes were over.

Allison did on occasion think she should ask Stiles if he had been there that night. Clear up that point among all the confusion. But she never did. Somehow, she could never quite shake an irrational fear that to bring up that night would bring out the fire banked in his eyes. 

\-----

“Was that punishment or mercy?” Derek asked, pulling Stiles next to him on their coach. Pushing him into the sofa and arranging him just so. His skin was cold from the wind that had picked up. Derek wished he would wear more on nights like this, when he sat outside for hours. Hung around swing sets. 

Derek rubbed his hands roughly up his arms, trying to warm his skin. 

“Allison?” Stiles asked, swatting at Derek’s hands, trying to still them. Derek huffed and tucked Stiles body tightly up next to him, Stiles’ head under his chin “It was both, I guess. She hated it. Hated the whole situation, her family, what she had become. You. But, she didn’t hate that this side exists. 

“She really didn’t mind that Scott was a werewolf. 

“So as punishment I took away the good and as mercy I took the bad. I gave her psilocybe for hallucinations and poppies to forget.”

Derek nodded against the top of Stiles’ head. 

“Does this mean you are done terrorizing the population? You’re not going to of someone’s head for making you cry?” Derek asked, resuming running his hands down Stiles’ arms. 

Stiles laughed. For the first time in months, “Man, you’ve been reading up. Poor Orpheus. I always liked him. I used to wonder what my life would have been like if I had had a muse for a mother instead of a fury.”

Stiles relaxed back into Derek’s chest. “No, I won’t rip someone’s head off for making me cry.” His body trembled against Derek’s chest as his laughter slowed to giggles. “Although, I might if they made you cry.”

Derek shook his head “No, that wouldn’t work. You are supposed to avenge, not revenge.”

“Always with the jokes” Stile snorted. 

A moment past and then Stiles patted Derek’s art “But, no, not if you don’t want.”

\-----

A fit of pique, a kidnapping, two months of entrapment, and a return. And somehow, in those two months, everything had changed. Everything was just different. Stiles was at the re-built house when they'd gotten back. Seemed thrilled to seem them. He'd smelled so much like their alpha that Erica had sunk into his arms and cried. Thought somewhere in the back of her mind that if Stiles accepted them, than Derek would as well. 

And she wasn't wrong. Derek had looked at them, glanced at Stiles, and taken them back. Smiled at them. Let them stay without a question and listened to their tales of woe. 

\-----

Stiles asked him months later, sprawled out across the couch, his body relaxed for the moment why he’d accepted them. Derek told him that there was enough shit in the world. He’d picked them, they hadn’t really chosen him. And everybody should have the chance to run away at least once. 

“And” Derek added “even if they leave again, there’s you.” 

“You’re so sure of me?” 

“Yes.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone for the comments on the ending.

**Author's Note:**

> I fucking swear, nothing makes me second guess my choices like hitting submit.  
> I left this up for an hour, and then rewrote the bloody end.


End file.
